Sarah Palin’s 2012 Shot At The Presidency Is Probably Over

Having taken on more and more political water in the last few months, the S.S. President Palin is sinking. Might be sunk. There’s just no other way to spin the numbers: she is a roundly unpopular national figure. For someone polling as abysmally as she is in Spring 2011, a November 2012 Palin win would be an historically bizarre event — the sort of thing political scientists would scratch their heads over for decades.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found the former Alaska governor’s popularity at all-time low, with just 25 percent of Americans expressing a positive opinion of her — and 53 percent a negative one. This was the worst score for any of the American politicians measured (although if it’s any consolation to Palin, she did fare better than Moammar Gadhafi, who clocked in with a two percent favorable rating) and represented an 18-point spike since last September in Palin’s negative rating.

The poll also found her falling back in the 2012 GOP horserace. Not long ago, she routinely finished at or near the top in ’12 trial heats; now she’s back in fifth place, with just ten percent.

How did it happen? She’s always been a nasty, polarizing figure. But she could always count on a nearly blind loyalty from the far right wing. Apparently, their eyes have begun to adjust in the bright light of serious presidential politics:

The answer seems to be that even opinion-shaping conservatives — the folks who had been making excuses for Palin — woke up, probably because they grasped for the first time how serious her ’12 prospects had become. As we’ve been tracking, commentators with deep credibility on the right began speaking up in the weeks and months after the November election, either casting doubt on her leadership skills or electability or making the case — as Andrew Breitbart did — that she’s just too big for the presidency.

Political commentators, oneafteranother, note Palin’s testy and self-serving reaction to the Tucson shooting and the public’s dismay at her “targeting” Gabrielle Giffords. Her numbers have sunk even more rapidly since then, and they show no sign of returning soon.